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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6487913" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, you are confused.  Whether or not the action is initiated by the player isn't the test.   The test is how reliant the player is on an obstacle being present in the setting that the DM has made relevant to the skill and the DM's level of detail and support in resolving the proposition.   Checking for traps is a very much classic case of a passive use of skill.  Whether it is of any use at all depends on whether or not there are traps in the environment.  Ancient Greek may be a very useful skill, but only if all the clues are written in Ancient Greek.  Checking for traps grants you no reliable narrative force.*  Being able to place a trap in the environment on the other hand would.*(In fact, the opposite is often the case.  If the DM is prone to improvisation, you are more likely to lose narrative force than gain it by checking for traps.)Because it has no mechanical force, it remains a passive skill.   If the rules elaborated, "In any wilderness setting, a player can make a Nature roll during every short rest to find level x 100 g.p. worth of useful reagents.  These reagents can used to pay the cost of a ritual.", then the skill would have an active component that doesn't depend (very greatly) on encounter design or DM fiat.   The very vagueness of what 4e skills do that you praise is what makes them so passive by default.  Sure, a DM can empower them via consistent rulings, but since the rules themselves don't describe how to do this in detail and that's highly dependent on improvisation (which is never reliable IMO), they are likely to remain passive.  Compare the treatment given to class abilities and the very definite mechanical benefits that derive there from, and a hypothetical treatment where Fighters had no class abilities but a combat 'knack' or 'skill' described in the rules only as, "Knowledgeable regarding combat techniques, fighting styles, and the use of arms."  In theory, such a skill could completely substitute for all the class powers and maneuvers of a fighter and then some in the hands of a capable and flexible DM, but in practice it probably wouldn't.  Likewise, in practice if it did, these 'rulings' would have a tendency to morph in to reliable and established house rules.Sub-categories of Athletics doesn't increase its active nature in and of itself.  But you'd have to bundle all possible benefits of various skills into Athletics to make it equivalently active.   Compare 4e Athletics with my approach.   For example, I have a 'Paladin' PC in the current group that has a 40' move purely because he's skilled at running, with no recourse to class features at all.</blockquote>

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